Cognex Forms New Business Units

NATICK, Mass., Jan. 8 -- Machine vision systems developer Cognex Corp. announced this week it has formed two new teams within its Modular Vision Systems Division to focus on new markets and applications.

The ID products team, to be managed by Justin Testa, a senior vice president at Cognex, will develop machine vision systems that can read codes on manufactured goods. The team is already marketing fixed-mount and hand-held readers; the fixed mount units were developed internally, and the hand-held units are from the company's recent acquisition of Gavitec in Germany.

The expert sensors team, to be led by Vice President Brian Phillips, will focus on ultralow-cost vision sensors that are each designed to solve a specific automation problem. The team has already developed a "people sensor" that uses 3-D technology to control automatic doors, Cognex said, and it will soon introduce sensors that will compete in the $1.5 billion worldwide market for "presence sensing" technology.

"Moore's Law continues to benefit machine vision," said Jim Hoffmaster, Cognex's COO. "The continued decline in price and increase in power of today's digital signal processors open up significant new opportunities for machine vision that just didn't exist two years ago. By adding these new dedicated product teams, we fully expect to quickly become the market leader in each of these new high-volume markets."

For more information, visit: www.cognex.com